Clin Orthop Relat Res (2019) 477:1-4 DOI 10.1097/CORR.0000000000000565 Editorial Published online: 2 January 2019 Copyright © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. on behalf of the Association of Bone and Joint Surgeons. All rights reserved. Editorial: Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, The Bone & Joint Journal, The Journal of Orthopaedic Research, and The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery Will Not Accept Clinical Research Manuscripts Previously Posted to Preprint Servers Seth S. Leopold MD, Fares S. Haddad FRCS(Orth), Linda J. Sandell PhD, Marc Swiontkowski MD F ifty years ago, The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) clarified a policy about what we now would call redundant or du- plicate publication. The Editor-in- Chief of NEJM at the time, Franz J. Ingelfinger, made it clear that (apart from a few exceptions) his journal would not publish research that had been submitted to any other journal or published in the media [7]. What has since come to be known at NEJM and elsewhere as the “Ingelfinger rule” has endured, largely unchanged [1, 15], to this day. It also has been the explicit policy of The Bone & Joint Journal (BJJ), Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research ® (CORR ® ), The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (JBJS), and the Journal of Orthopaedic Research (JOR) not to accept research papers submitted or published elsewhere ei- ther as a whole or in part. We are not alone in this regard. The leading in- ternational bodies whose standards of scholarly publishing we seek to adhere to, including the Committee on Publi- cation Ethics (COPE) and the In- ternational Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), both con- sider (again, with a few exceptions) prior submission or publication of work sent to a journal for review to be an ethical and practical problem; according to COPE, it is grounds for retraction of a published paper [20], and the ICMJE lists numerous harms that it can cause, including, but not limited to, The authors of this editorial are the Editors-in-Chief of Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research ® , The Bone & Joint Journal, the Journal of Orthopaedic Research, and The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, respectively, and this editorial is being published concurrently in all four of those journals. The authors certify that neither they, nor any members of their immediate families, have any commercial associations (such as consultancies, stock ownership, equity interest, patent/licensing arrangements, etc.) that might pose a conflict of interest in connection with the submitted article. S. S. Leopold, Editor-in-Chief, Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, Philadelphia, PA, USA F. S. Haddad, Editor-in-Chief, The Bone & Joint Journal, London, UK L. J. Sandell, Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Orthopaedic Research, St. Louis, MO, USA M. Swiontkowski, Editor-in-Chief, The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, Needham, MA, USA S. S. Leopold MD (✉), Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research ® , 1600 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19013 USA, Email: sleopold@ clinorthop.org All ICMJE Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest forms for Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research ® are on file with the publication and can be viewed on request; the Editors’ disclosure statements also appear each month in print on the masthead of Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research ® . The ICMJE Disclosure form for the Editor of The Bone & Joint Journal is available with the BJJ online version of this article. The ICMJE Disclosure form for the Editor of the Journal of Orthopaedic Research is available from the Orthopaedic Research Society. The ICMJE Disclosure form for the Editor of The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery is provided with the JBJS online version of this article.